Nicola Perra (Queen Mary, University of London) – Modelling the spread of infectious diseases in the digital era

Computational models are revolutionizing our understanding of infectious disease spread. This presentation explores how integrating mobile phone data, global mobility patterns, socioeconomic strata and epidemiological records can enhance our ability to characterize and predict epidemic dynamics across spatio-temporal scales. I will show how these data can be used to: (i) uncover the initial phases (i.e., cryptic spreading) of the COVID-19 pandemic globally; (ii) quantify social inequalities in the adoption of non-pharmaceutical interventions in a large metropolitan area; and (iii) improve the realism of traditional epidemic models by accounting for multiple dimensions beyond age in the stratification of contact patterns.